The Buried Gods Go Quiet When You Hold Me Close

The glass railing holds my reflection like a fossil trapped in amber, and I have stopped believing which of us is the echo. This beige spire behind me is not merely architecture; it is an antenna left by a civilization that learned to sing before they learned to die, their high-tech relics buried so deep beneath the pavement that the city's hum still carries their haunting whispers in frequencies only my bones can hear.
I wear the butterfly on my chest like a relic I was born with - white wings edged in black lace, each vein a circuit older than starlight. For years it has broadcast me into cold static, a lonely signal no one answers, and I have let that cosmic silence freeze the warmth out of my own heart until even touch felt like data being copied.
Then you walk onto this promenade with your hands in your pockets, and the buried gods go quiet. You do not scan me or decode me; you simply reach up and tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear, your thumb lingering on the black lace at my collar as if tracing an ancient script only you can read. The heat of your palm slides down through the sheer stocking at my thigh, and for one trembling moment the alien frequency collapses into something smaller and softer - just your breath against my neck, just the slow pulse beneath your fingertips.
They will dig these streets up in ten thousand years and find our shadows pressed into the glass, two figures standing close while the old machines slept. And they will marvel at the technology that finally healed me: not a relic from the deep past, but your hand, warm and certain, choosing to stay.

Editor: Ancient Future